I Am J

by Cris Beam

  At the door, a woman was sitting in a battered armchair, also reading the paper. Her hair was dyed red and was flat and tangled in the back, as if she’d just woken up, but she had lipstick on. “Just show him some money,” she said to J as he reached for the door.

  “Huh?” J answered.

  “He wants to see that you have cash on you. He’ll let you stay. There are empty rooms; Greg’s not a bad guy.” She held out her hand. “I’m Marcia.”

  J took her hand and got a closer look. Marcia, which she pronounced “Mar-see-uh,” had watery dark eyes and crow’s-feet. Her hands were dry, and her fingers felt thick against J’s own. J thought, just for a moment, that she might be trans, too. “Thanks,” he said.

  J walked back toward Greg’s desk, fingering the bills in his pocket, but suddenly turned back around. “How much?” he asked Marcia. He didn’t want to be duped.

  “Just divide whatever he told you by seven, and go up from there.”

  Greg had moved from comics to sports, when J carefully laid fifty dollars above his paper. Greg gave a small head shake and licked his thumb, about to turn the page. J added a ten. Greg shook his head again. If J added more money and ate for the day, he could only last two nights. Still, J put down another twenty. Greg reached behind him, to a wall of keys hanging on hooks. “Room seventeen,” he said, handing J a set. “Third floor. Be out by ten. Elevator’s broke.”

  The eighty-dollar room had a painting of a ship bolted above the bed, and a small fridge that buzzed wetly in the corner. The blue polyester bedspread with its eighties floral design clashed with the blue carpet, worn in spots and burned with several cigarette holes by the window. J looked out on the West Side Highway, and the zoom of cars competed for auditory dominance with the fridge’s buzzing and a man seemingly coughing up a hairbrush next door. He pulled back the bedspread, lay on the sheets, and lit a cigarette.

  This was almost too easy. He never knew that a kid could just run away one morning and have a room within two hours. Greg didn’t even ask for his name, though J had practiced saying “Jason Garcia” on the train and had made up a story about having just flown in, his luggage lost by the airline, all his identification with it. J assumed that adults who worked in hotels, even crappy ones like this, would ask for driver’s licenses and credit cards, but Greg had cared only about the cash.

  Maybe J could just keep going. He could sell the necklace and go somewhere cheaper, hang out for a while, get a job. Would New Jersey do it? How far away was Montana? He let his mind drift to a horse ranch, brushing manes and tails, nailing on shoes, somewhere in a pasture, beneath mountains. He’d sleep in a stable, and the ranch owner’s daughter, who looked like Blue, would bring him a breakfast of coffee and toast, to eat sitting on a bale of hay. No one would believe that this mysterious city boy could be so masterful with the horses. Even the wildest would be tame under his command, and the ranch would become rich, offering rides and lessons to women and kids who would come from miles away to train on these majestic horses.

  J had never been on a horse, had only pet the ones who pulled buggies through Central Park. But it seemed likely that he’d be good with them, since animals generally liked him more than humans did. Besides, this hotel room, for all its shabbiness, made J feel powerful. He’d never had his own room before, only his own corner, and never a door.

  I could do anything if I had my own place, he thought.

  But this place wasn’t going to last him very long, not on the money he had. He couldn’t lie around all day, daydreaming. He looked out the window; it had started to snow. He wondered when his parents would notice he was missing and who they would call.

  T, J thought. Focus on T. Sadness had slowed him down before, and he didn’t have time for it now. Before he lost his nerve or his money, J had to get to the clinic and get a shot of testosterone. He was ready. By the time he got home, with a new voice and bigger muscles, his parents certainly would have missed him so much they wouldn’t care anymore about what he looked like.

  Maybe T would work incredibly fast on J; maybe he’d get the voice in a matter of weeks. Maybe he could apply for jobs in camera shops; did all employers require identification? Everything was so complicated. But once he started T, there would be no going back; this was a decision he was, for once, making entirely on his own. His parents couldn’t stop him. By the time he got back to his parents’ apartment, the hormones would already be pulling their invisible threads, stitching him up tighter inside, making him tougher to all the world’s threats and demands. His mother could be frightened, his dad could be angry, but they couldn’t take this change away; he was nobody’s little girl. J was nobody’s pussy. He may have run away in a panic, but testosterone, he knew, would give him direction.

  The snow was falling gently as J made his way to the clinic he’d read about online. It wasn’t too far from where he was staying. He’d left most of the clothes from his backpack at the hotel, so now only his camera clanked against his lower back, and he’d carefully divided his money into three different pockets, one of which held the gold necklace. Now that he was on his own, he had to be careful. But the city looked softer in its snow dust, and the cars moved more slowly, making way for J to cross in front of them. I’m ready, he said again. Give me that shot.

  But there was a line at the clinic. The waiting room was smaller than the one he was used to, at his pediatrician’s office in the hospital where his mother worked. J signed in at a clipboard and looked around. Posters claiming HIV STOPS WITH ME and advertisements for medical trials cluttered one wall, and a few adults sat around reading magazines. J sat and jiggled his knee. He felt too young for this place; he’d never gone to a doctor without his mother. Just stay, he told himself. Get the shot and go.

  J had read that testosterone took six months to really kick in, but some guys stopped their periods in three weeks. God, he hated those days. Stopping at the bodega to pick up tampons, saying “no, super plus” to the guy behind the counter, wishing he could just disappear. If T could just end the periods, that alone would be worth the sharp jab in the thigh every other week.

  And maybe, because J was young, the testosterone would work extra fast on him. He could almost feel his shoulders growing, pressing up and out against the seams in his shirt, his neck thickening, his jawline jutting out into a tough, masculine edge. He knew facial hair took a long time to come in, but that was okay. If he could lose the baby fat on his face, he’d look a lot better. He imagined the fluid in the shot (it was probably gold-colored) zipping up through his flesh, under his skin, and eating up the fat, melting it on contact. Yes, the fat around his jaw would go first, maybe within a week. And then the magical gold would pour down his throat, lengthening his vocal cords, burning them, stripping them into a raspy, deep bass. Okay, maybe not with the first shot; he had to be realistic. But the first shot would do something to his voice. It would kick-start it, especially if he smoked more cigarettes to help it along. His body was made for testosterone, he could feel it; it was as if he had a million receptor cells, open like hungry mouths, that had been waiting for the testosterone since the day he was born.

  “J?” A receptionist behind a window called his name.

  J wiped his palms on his jeans and got up.

  “We do testosterone on Thursdays, five to ten.”

  J tumbled down a few stairs inside himself. This was Saturday; how could he wait that long? The receptionist had led him to a small room where he was meeting with a social worker named Janet. She was pretty, in a wool skirt and high boots, and she twirled her pen as she spoke. “Do you have a letter from your doctor?”

  “A what?” J could barely get the words out, now that he knew he’d have to wait nearly an entire week for his shot. And he was so ready.

  “Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” Janet was saying, though now she sounded like she was in a tunnel, somewhere far away. “How old are you, J?”

  “Eighteen,” he lied. His birthday wasn’t for another
six weeks.

  “Okay, that’s good,” Janet said. “Because you know you have to be eighteen to get started on hormone therapy, right?”

  J hadn’t known. He shook his head miserably.

  “And you have identification, showing you’re eighteen?”

  J nodded. Things were getting worse. Melissa could maybe score him a fake ID; she was good at things like that. If Melissa was still talking to him. If doctors’ offices would accept a fake ID; this wasn’t a dance club.

  Janet was still talking. “Okay, J, I’m going to explain how the protocol works at our clinic, and we can go from there.” Janet handed him some kind of packet, which J automatically stuffed into his back pocket. He didn’t want to look desperate. “Basically, you come in here and get an examination from one of our doctors to determine your general health and current hormone levels and to see whether you have any counseling needs we can meet. You can make an appointment with the receptionist to do that. In the meantime, you need to provide us with a letter from your therapist saying that you’re in her care, you are gender variant, and she’s willing to vouch for you being ready to undergo hormone therapy. Then—”

  “You mean I have to see a shrink to do this?” J interrupted. “I can’t just get a shot?”

  Janet looked at him and shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. There’s something called the Standards of Care, which most doctors follow. They require psychiatric evaluation before any gender reassignment procedures can be implemented.”

  That word again: reassignment. “But I don’t need a shrink!” J protested. “I just need T!”

  “A lot of people feel that way,” Janet said, leaning back in her chair and twirling the pen again. She wasn’t pretty anymore, J realized; she was very plain, and her lips were too thin. “But that’s not the way it works. If you don’t have a therapist, we have some excellent ones here, accustomed to working with the young transgender populations. Once they’ve seen you for an appropriate length of time—and this varies, but generally between three and six months—they can provide the requisite letter, and we can begin the hormone protocol.”

  Suddenly J hated Janet, and her skirt and her pen and her stupid prissy boots. Did she have to talk like a robot, like a white, dictionary-obsessed robot? Janet had the shots, probably filled and ready to go, right behind her in that cabinet, and she was babbling away in fancy words that just meant no.

  But instead of blowing up Janet with the hand grenade J wished he had in his backpack, he just stood up to leave. “Okay,” he mumbled.

  “J,” Janet said, “I know this can be terribly disappointing. But we’re here to help. Even if you’re under eighteen, you can sometimes get the treatment with a guardian’s informed consent. I included information about all this in the package I handed you. Also, I don’t know how you’re faring on housing, but there are other brochures at the front desk, about shelters where you can stay for free. They’re for youth up to age twenty-three.”

  J narrowed his eyes, which were finding patterns in the carpet. “I’m not homeless.”

  “I wasn’t implying that you were. We just let everyone in your age demographic know the services that are available to them.”

  Thank you, Robotron, J said in his head as he turned to leave. Still, he took a brochure for the shelter before he slammed out the clinic door.

  “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!” J shouted, kicking the wall, kicking the snow, kicking a hydrant, and jumping up to punch a bus-stop sign overhead. A lady with her arms full of shopping bags made a wide half circle around J to give him room on the sidewalk, and he shouted at her back. “Yeah, I’m crazy! They sending me to a shrink! You wanna take me home, lady?” The woman didn’t look back.

  On a weekend, Blue and Madison wouldn’t be at the Starbucks. J was too pissed to be alone but too lonely to be pissed for long. He wanted distraction, and after kicking a few more garbage cans, he called Blue.

  “How’s the weather in Brooklyn?” J asked when she picked up.

  “J!” Blue said into the phone. She sounded happy. “Where are you?”

  They decided to meet at the corner of Blue’s block, despite the snow; she didn’t want her mom to interfere again.

  “I was afraid you’d be mad at me,” Blue said, running up to J and hugging him when she saw him turn her corner. It was their first hug, and J felt a heat rising up his neck, under Blue’s cardigan, which he was wearing as a scarf. Blue jumped back and was hopping from one foot to the other to fight the cold. Ladybugs decorated her rain boots (ladybugs!), along with a generous amount of blue paint.

  “Mad? Why?” J tried to swallow up the full, sweet sexiness of Blue in one gulp, as though she were a photograph, hopping there in her rain boots and old-man overcoat, a knitted scarf wrapped around her neck and head, blue hair poking out at her temples. He unwrapped the cardigan from his neck and handed it to her. “I brought you your sweater.”

  “No, keep it,” Blue said. “It looks cute on you.”

  Cute. That word. Was J cute? He blushed. “Well, then, I have to give you something of mine.” He felt around in his pockets. “I mean, I bought you something.”

  Blue blinked, a half smile making her cheek dimple. J loved the way she had to look up at him; Blue was so short.

  “Close your eyes and take off your scarf,” he said. Where was he getting this confidence? A few hours ago, he was being robotronned into therapy; now he was starring in his own romantic movie. Blue did as she was told, tipping her chin up toward his face. God, he wanted to kiss her.

  J pulled the gold chain from his pocket. It took him a few extra seconds to untangle a knot and figure out the clasp, but finally he got it around her neck, the gold resting perfectly on Blue’s clavicle. It was a simple chain, not too thick but not cheap, either, and it made the white of Blue’s skin even whiter, almost fragile.

  Blue opened her eyes and smiled. She felt the chain, lifted it in her palm, tried to see it, but it was too short to pull into her line of vision. “J,” she whispered. “This is too much.”

  Was it? Had he screwed up again? Had J just scared away his potential girlfriend and his backup savings in one dumb, spontaneous move? Blue was walking away, toward her house, but then she stopped in front of a drugstore. She looked at her reflection in the window. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Oh, my God. It’s so beautiful.”

  J walked over to her and looked at the reflection. Blue was touching the chain with one finger and smiling softly to herself. She spun and hugged J, the second time that day. “J, thank you, thank you!”

  And then they were kissing. With the snow falling and the streetlights coming on, they were kissing. With Blue’s knitted scarf tangled on the sidewalk, and J’s hands fumbling to find a resting place on Blue’s back, they were kissing. And there was tongue, and lip and a quick smile, and mouth and then puffy jacket pressed hard against overcoat, and J snuck a peek, but Blue’s eyes were closed, those beautiful eyes, and they were kissing and kissing and kissing.

  Back at the hotel, J spread his remaining money out on the bed. A laugh track from a sitcom blared from the room next door. A hundred sixteen dollars and some change. The cost of the room minus the pizza and candy he’d eaten that day.

  “Hahahahahaha!” the wall to his right bellowed.

  If he stayed again tomorrow and could eat for three bucks, that would mean he’d have thirty-three dollars left by Monday morning.

  “Hahahahaha!”

  Still, he wasn’t sorry he’d given Blue the chain.

  “Hahahahahaha!” A really big laugh this time. J banged on the wall with his fist. Someone banged back, and the TV volume went up. J put on his headphones. He could sell his iPod. That might get him another twenty. And his camera—no, not that. Not yet.

  Think, J, he commanded. Think.

  By now, Carolina would have returned from her shift at the hospital and found his note. He imagined her reading it, in the chair by the window, tears gathering in her eyes, suddenly sorry for t
he way she’d treated him last night. But why hadn’t she called his cell phone yet? That part was weird.

  Dear Mami, he’d written. I can’t live here anymore. I’m sorry. Please don’t worry about me. I love you. J.

  J looked at his phone. No calls.

  So thirty bucks by Monday, maybe fifty if he sold the iPod somewhere, and a hundred miles from starting T. It was nine o’clock; maybe his mother was relieved to have him gone. Maybe she and his father had talked about it and realized they could use all the college money they’d saved and throw a really big anniversary party, take a trip back to Puerto Rico, get a bigger apartment. J had already screwed up his chances for college, probably. His grades in junior year were good, and everybody said that was the most important, but this year he’d been a mess. And he’d missed two weeks already.

  What was he thinking? He wasn’t going back to school! Not PS 386, not anywhere. He had run away to become a man, and then maybe come back home, muscular, confident, solid in himself. But where was home if his parents didn’t want him? Maybe he was being dramatic; he’d only run away for fourteen hours now. But the man part was slipping away, too. Damn, he’d been so sure he could get that testosterone, and everything else would just fall into place. He hadn’t thought this through.

  But now that he’d started, he also wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t go home, where his parents sometimes called him Jeni. Or school, where everyone knew he’d been born a girl. He had to find a way, with his last $116 on the bed, to make this work.

  Suddenly, there was knock on the door. J froze. How had Carolina found him so fast?

  Knock-knock.

  J didn’t move.

  “J?” A voice said. “It’s Marcia. Are you in there?”

  Marcia! The woman from the lobby. J let out a long breath of relief, scooped his money into his pocket, and went to the door.

  “I was just thinking about you,” Marcia said, brushing past J to stand and survey his room. “Oh, you got one with a view. My room looks out on a wall.”